"Wow! Making our game was extremely easy. I honestly thought it would take longer, but I finished it sooooo quick. I ended up adding so many things since I had tons of time.- No Game Developer Ever

I really wish we had taken to heart the advice to make a minimal viable product. Mistakenly, I believed that since we had a really solid idea of the game we wanted to make...all we needed to do was follow our outline and things would work out. Wow, I was wrong.

Since our game was somewhat similar to an arcade game we enjoyed, I assumed that if we followed a similar path our game would capture the same "fun" factor. In reality though, we missed out on a lot of possible feedback and iteration. Even if that "feedback" was just us internally playing and testing. For example, from the start of making our game, we had a firm idea of how the camera would follow the player.

If we had iterated more, if we had playtested more, it wouldn't have taken us so long to figure out that our idea was horrible. We didn't really stop to think that the way we created our camera was actually making our game worse. Major mistake.

Why did it take us so long? We never made a minimal viable product. Although we had a bunch of different things we were working on, we failed to simplify. We had various ideas/features we were working on, but at the same time, we had pieces missing that prevented us from really testing and playing the way the player would. Please don't make the same mistake we did.

It was a great learning lesson though. I've come to the opinion that actually making &releasing a game gives the best type of experience. Technoforce isn't really that difficult of a game and it wouldn't pose a challenge to an experienced game developer. But speaking as an aspiring game dev it has taught me many things. As we go ahead in the future we have a lot of things I want to do differently. So what does all this mean for Technoforce? Also more broadly speaking what does the future hold for us in general?

I'll first talk about what the future holds for Technoforce specifically. First things first, we have simplified quite a bit. As I mentioned in the last devlog we've cut down on some features and extras we had considered adding. We've also had some internal discussions about how and when we will release Technoforce. The hard deadline we have given ourselves is that we will have a playable build in the next 2-3 weeks. When the time comes we'll post the build on Itch.io. Its long over due and we're really excited to finally get over this obstacle and force ourselves to make some serious progress.

Ok, but what are our plans after Technoforce? We've learned so much from making this relatively 'small' game. Thus instead of working on one game for far too long what if we made more games in the same amount of time? How much more could we learn that we wouldn't have otherwise?

So that's the plan we have going forward. We're going to make this work. Enough though of me rambling...I think its time to end this mini novel. :) Huge shout out to all those who have been following us on Twitter and Discord! I really appreciate all of you. Its been a huge encouragement and motivator to continue going. Deepest thanks again and I really do hope you all have a great weekend!